Note 163 — Chapter XI

It appears that we shall be compelled henceforward to considerably modify our usually received opinions with regard to the nations of Central Asia. It cannot now be any longer doubted that many of these populations contain a very considerable admixture of white blood, a fact of which our predecessors in the study of history had not the slightest apprehension. Alexander Von Humboldt makes a very important remark upon this subject, in speaking of the Kirghis-Kazakes, mentioned by Menander of Byzant, and Constantine Porphyrogenetus; and he shows conclusively that the Kirghis (χερχις) concubine spoken of by the former writer as a present of the Turkish chief Dithubùl to Zemarch, the ambassador of Justinian II., in A. D. 569, was a girl of mixed blood—partly white. She is the precise counterpart of those beautiful Turkish girls, whose charms are so much extolled by Persian writers, and who did not belong, any more than she, to the Mongolian race. (Vide Asie Centrale, vol. i. p. 237, et passim, and vol. ii. pp. 130, 131.) [163]